Revision as of 16:54, 25 September 2007

Burmese (မ္ရန္‌မာစကား ba ma za ga) is the official and primary language of Myanmar. It is closely related to Chinese and Tibetan. The government uses the term "Myanmar" to describe the language, although most continue to refer to the language as "Burmese".

Grammar

Burmese word order is subject-object-verb, unlike English word order, which is subject-verb-object. Subjects and objects are omitted when such is implied in context. As a rule, all objects must be attached to a -go particle.

Burmese has an array of honorifics. Its grammar also contains many prefixes and suffixes indicating tense and mood.

The Burmese often use family names such as "brother", "sister", "auntie" in place of "you" and "I".

Pronunciation guide

Read English signs properly
Burmese, similar to French, rarely has consonant endings, because most become glottal stops (like the 'h' in uh-oh!) or nasalised. Burmese names spelt in English include these endings to denote the fact that the endings are written. These endings include:

-'k'

such as in Kyaiktiyo (a Buddhist pilgrimage site), which is pronounced chaih-TEE-ou.

-'ne'

such as Mawlamyine (a city in Myanmar), which is pronounced mau-la-myain.

-'ng'

such as in Sagaing (a city in Myanmar), which is pronounced za-gainh.

-'m'

such as in dhamma (a Buddhist term), which is pronounced dha-MA.
(A special case accompanies -m. For example, lam, which means "street", is pronounced lan, with an -n.)

-'r'

such as in Myanmar, which is pronounced myan-MA.

-'t'

such as in Thatbyinnyu (a temple in Bagan), which is pronounced thah-BYIN-nyu.

Burmese is a tonal language, consisting of four tones (low, high, creaky, checked). All dialects of Burmese in Myanmar adhere to this rule, although vocabulary usage varies from region to region.

Burmese is written using the Burmese script, which is based on an ancient Indian script called Pali. Its alphabet contains 34 letters, which look like circles or semi-circles. The Burmese script also contains many tone marks and sound modifying marks.

Burmese uses an English-based romanisation system.

Vowels

Burmese has a complicated set of vowels, containing 12 vowels.

Diphthongs

ai

like the 'i' in site

au

like the 'ou' in out; always used with a consanant ending

ei

like the 'a' in ache

ou

like the 'oa' in moat

Monophthongs

a

like the 'a' in mama

e

like the 'e' in she

i

like the 'ea' in meat

o

like the 'o' in tote

u

like the 'ew' in lewd

ih

like the 'i' in trip

Consonants

Burmese consanants are aspirated (contains an 'h' sound) and unaspirated (does not contain an 'h' sound).

Aspirated and unaspirated consanants are romanised irregularly, because a uniform system does not yet exist.

b

like the 'b' in bat

d

like the 'd' in dagger

g

like the 'g' in gap

h

like the 'h' in house

k

like the 'k' in tanker

kh

like the 'c' in cat

ky

like the 'j' in jeep

l

like the 'l' in love

m

like the 'm' in mad

n

like the 'n' in nut

ng

like the 'ng' in dancing

ny

like the 'ni' in onion

p

like the 'p' in

ph

like the 'p' in pig

r

becomes a 'y', or is silent

s

like a 's' in sing, or becomes a 'th' sound

shw

like the 'sh' in shack

hs

like a 's' in sound

t

like a 't' in that

th

like a 't' in tongue

w

like a 'w' in win

y

like a 'y' in young

z

like a 'z' in zoo

Phrase list

Negations
Burmese, when negating verbs, uses two of the following structures:

ma + ____ + bu

used to mean that the verb was not accomplished.
Example: Nei ma kaing bu, which means "You did not touch it".

ma + ____ + neh

used to mean that the verb must not be accomplished.
Example: Nei ma kaing neh, which means "You do not touch it."

Basics

Hello.

မဂႆလာပၝ. (Min ga la ba.)

Hello. (informal)

. (Nei kaon la?)

How are you?

? (Nei kaon la?)

Fine, thank you.

. (Ne kaon ba de)

What is your name?

? (Kamya ye na mee ba le?)

My name is ______ .

______ . (Kya nau na mee _____ ba.)

Nice to meet you.

. (Twe ya da wanta ba de)

Please.

. (Kyeizu pyu yue )

Thank you.

. (Kyeizu tin ba de.)

You're welcome.

. (Ya ba de.)

Yes.

. (Ho de.)

No.

. (Ma ho bu.)

Excuse me. (getting attention)

ခင္ဗဵာ? (Ka mya?)

Excuse me. (begging pardon)

. ()

I'm sorry.

. (saw-re-be )

Goodbye

. (Thwa dau me)

Goodbye (informal)

. (Thwa dau me)

I can't speak name of language [well].

[ ]. ( [ba ma za ga go [kaung-kaung] ma pyaw thet bu.])

Do you speak English?

? ( in glei za ga go pyaw thet de la?)

Is there someone here who speaks English?

? (In glei za-ga pyaw thet de lu di ma shi la?)

Help!

! (A ku nyi lo de!)

Look out!

! (Ai ya! Kyi!)

Good morning.

. (Mingalaba )

morning

("ma neh")

afternoon

. ("ney-le")

evening

. (nya ney)

night

. (nya)

Good night (to sleep)

. (Eigh douh meh )

I don't know.

. ("Kya-nau ma thi bu")

I don't understand.

. (Kya-nau na ma ley bu)

Where is the toilet?

? (Ka mya yei, ein da ga be ma leh)

Problems

Numbers

Burmese numbers follow the Arabic system of numerals.

0

၀ (thoun-nya)

1

၁ (thi, tha)

2

၂ (hni)

3

၃ (thoun)

4

၄ (lei)

5

၅ (nga)

6

၆ (chao)

7

၇ (kun hni)

8

၈ (shit)

9

၉ (ko)

10

၁၀ (se)

11

၁၁ (seh-thi)

12

၁၂ (seh-hnih)

13

၁၃ (seh-thoun)

14

၁၄ (seh-lei)

15

၁၅ (seh-nga)

16

၁၆ (seh-chauk)

17

၁၇ (seh-kuun)

18

၁၈ (seh-shit)

19

၁၉ (seh-kou)

20

၂၀ (hna-seh)

21

၂၁ (hna-seh-thih)

22

၂၂ (hna-seh-hnih)

23

၂၃ (hna-seh-thoun)

30

၃၀ (thoun-zeh)

40

၄၀ (lei-zeh)

50

၅၀ (nga-zeh)

60

၆၀ (chau-seh)

70

၇၀ (kueh-na-seh)

80

၈၀ (shit-seh)

90

၉၀ (ko-zeh)

100

၁၀၀ (thi-ya)

200

၂၀၀ (hni-ya)

300

၃၀၀ (thoun-ya)

500

၅၀၀ (nga-ya)

1000

၁၀၀၀ (tha-taon)

2000

၂၀၀၀ (hna-taon)

10,000

(se-thaon)

number _____ (train, bus, etc.)

Burmese uses several measure words. As a general rule, use ku for items, and yau for persons.

Time

now

a gu

later

nao ma

before

a shei

morning

ma ne

afternoon

nei le

night

nya

Clock time

What time is it?

Be na nai to bi le?

It is nine in the morning.

Ko nai to bi.

Three-thirty PM.

Thoun nai kwe.

Duration

_____ minute(s)

min-ni (မိနစ္‌)

_____ hour(s)

nai yi (နာရီ)

_____ day(s)

ye' or nei (နေ့)

_____ week(s)

ba

_____ month(s)

la (လ)

_____ year(s)

hni (န္ဟစ္‌)

Days

today

di nei

yesterday

ma nei

tomorrow

ma ne pyan

this week

di ba

last week

a yin ba

next week

nao ba

Sunday

tha nin ga nei (တနင္ဂန္ဝေ)

Monday

tha nin la (တနင္‌းလာ)

Tuesday

in ga (အင္ဂာ)

Wednesday

bo ta hu (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး)

Thursday

kya tha ba dei (က္ရားသပတေး)

Friday

tao kya (သောက္ရာ)

Saturday

sa nei (စနေ)

Note: The Burmese calendar consists of 8 days, with one day between Wednesday and Thursday, called ya-hu, although this is purely ceremonial.

Months

Writing time and date

Colors

black

အမည္ ရောင္ a me yaon

white

အဖ္ရူရောင္ a pyu yaon

gray

မီးခု္းရောင္ mi go yaon

red

အနီရောင္ a ni yaon

blue

အပ္ရာရောင္ a pya yaon

yellow

အဝာရောင္ a wa yaon

green

အစိမ္ရောင္ a sein yaon

orange

လိမ္မော္ရောင္ lein mau yaon

purple

ခရမ္းရောင္ ka-yan yaon

brown

အညိုရောင္ a nyo yaon

Do you have it in another color?

Di ha go nao a yaon de she la?

Transportation

Bus and train

Train
yeh-ta

Train Station
thu ta yone

Bus
ba(sa) ka

Bus Station
ka hma tine

Directions

Over there
ho behtLeft Side
beh behtRight Side
nya beht

Taxi

Is this taxi free? Te ka se ahh tha la

Lodging

Bed
ga din
Restroom
ehn na
Shower
yay cho cun
Food
asa

Money

How much is it?
Zey beh lout le?Money
chet
one dollar
deh chet

two dollars
neh chet

three dollars
thone chet

four dollars
ley chet

five dollars
nga chet

six dollars
chowt chet

seven dollars
cuni chet

eight dollars
sheh chet

nine dollars
coh chet

ten dollars
se chet

twenty dollars
neh se chet

fifty dollars
nga se chet

one hundred dollars
theya chet

Eating

I am hungry.
Nga bite sa de.

Where do you want to go eat?
Beh sau thot sine thwa meh le?

Fried foods
uh chaw sa

Noodles
cow sweh

Rice (white)
htamin

Fried rice
htamin chaw

Ice
yey ghe

Ice cream bar
yey ghe mou

Sugar
de ja

Salt
sa

MSG
a cho mout

Potato
ah lou

Vegetable
a yweh

Fruit
a thee

Banana
nguh pyaw thee

Apple
pun thee

Apple Juice
pun thee yay

Grapes
duh beh thee

Bars

Shopping

Store
sine

Clothes
ain gee

Pants
boun bee

Shoes
punuht

Bra
bou le

Ring
lut sout

Socks
chey sout

House
ehn

Purse/Wallet
puh sun eight

Backpack
saw ough eight

Movies
youh shin

Driving

Car
ka

Authority

Learning more

This is a usable article. It has information for getting in as well as some complete entries for restaurants and hotels. An adventurous person could use this article, but please plunge forward and help it grow!